Dear employer, in a difficult situation in which we are analyzing each of which has cost our company is easy to fall into the temptation of removing the semi-annual or annual fee we pay to the employers' associations to which we belong. If we go further, and indeed the temptation becomes "sin" should not go through the confessional, only a "venial sin, a human decision, entirely legitimate and understandable, but raises a question: why give me low if the employer so far there have been a member? The answer is - painful for the leaders of the employers - to "remove any advantage in not as if tragus keep investing, not spending.

The next question, which can now be done on both sides, is why there is no profit? Probably, both parties also believe that because the service is not offered the associate asks, seeing it each from its perspective.

Promotion of Employment represents 163 business organizations in Catalonia of which 23 are regional and cross-sectoral and 140. These latter are a characteristic feature, usually well managed, that is coexistence between competitors and potential conflicts that may occur, but seen from another perspective, this feature encourages cooperation and the possibility of developing clusters. Because ultimately, an employer is an environment to collaborate, share and participate, and especially in bad times, usually accompanied by better - just better share because they are less penalties, and share cheers, because they are happier. Whereas this approach may be worthwhile to adapt the words of JF Kennedy: do not ask that employers can do for you, asking you what you can do for employers.

However, leaders of employers should be aware that they must provide service, the member will receive in return. There are those who have chosen to become, even in services company competing directly with other companies, and personally I do not think that is the purpose of an employers' organization - it would be a kind of cooperative dedicated to providing professional services. The service, whether regional or sector employers, is to project the collective, to make it visible, with the ability to influence others to support the needs and interests of its members, ie, goes to the policy noblest sense of the term. The service also passes through these horizontal activities useful for all partners but not to offer services that compete with the market. One of the very clear, for example, information management, be the Business Intelligence Unit of the sector or territory, to facilitate strategic decision making in companies that have no access capability. But to provide service, the leaders of the employers must be able to identify that they want their partners and, above all, they want to know not what they want, and this is a question of attitude, to show that actually care about for them, you feel your mood, visit them, see their reality closely, which worries that are happy, listen and run initiatives and defend the interests of partners in all those places necessary, ultimately, moving.

In these times we live, employers should be kept together and the leaders of the employers, especially smaller ones, to demonstrate irrefutably that are at his side. Some children, since they do publicly.

Joseph Albet

UEP, Union Business Penedès, No 7, March 2009